Former Soldier Alfredo Galán Walks Into a Police Station and Says He Is Spain's "Playing Card Killer"
The 26-year-old ex-corporal convinced detectives by describing blue ink dots on the cards left beside the victims, a detail never made public.
Published
For months Spanish police had hunted a gunman who left playing cards beside his victims. On the evening of July 3, 2003, a former soldier walked into the police station in Puertollano and told officers he was that man.
Alfredo Galán Sotillo, 26, arrived at about 7:30 p.m.; earlier that day he had approached a police patrol, which told him to go to the station. At first his account was thin, and investigators doubted him. As the questioning went on, he gave details known only to the police, among them one they considered decisive: he had marked the backs of the cards with dots of blue ink. Homicide officers from the Madrid police and the Guardia Civil rushed to Puertollano to question him, and a judge authorized his transfer to Madrid.
Galán, a native of Puertollano and a former army corporal who had served in Bosnia, worked for a security company in Alcalá de Henares. Police said he kept newspaper clippings about the six killings. Between January 24 and March 18, 2003, six people had been shot dead in the Madrid region: Juan Francisco Ledesma, 50, a building porter in Madrid; Juan Carlos Martín Estacio, 28, an airport cleaner; Mikel Jiménez Sánchez, 18, and Juana Uclés López, 57, at a bar in Alcalá de Henares; and George and Doina Magda, both 40, near Arganda del Rey. He later told police that he had not placed the first card, found beside Juan Carlos Martín Estacio, but that after reading about it in the press he decided to keep leaving them.
A former paratrooper who had been arrested earlier in the case asked the judge to drop the charges against him. In March 2005 a Madrid court sentenced Galán to 142 years and three months in prison for six murders and three attempted murders.
Cadena SER reported that Galán said he had thrown the gun into a dump at Puertollano, while La Voz de Galicia said police were searching a dump at Almodóvar del Campo. The newspapers also spelled one victim's surname differently, Martín Estacio and Martín Espacio.
Sources
- Se entrega en Puertollano el presunto "asesino de la baraja", Cadena SER
- El asesino de la baraja confiesa que el uso de los naipes como seña de identidad nació por casualidad, La Voz de Galicia
- La Audiencia de Madrid condena al 'asesino del naipe' a 142 años de prisión, El País